This movie has no redeeming qualities. It is 85 minutes long and contains at most 85 seconds of actual content. The entire plot is three sentences long. I’m not being hyperbolic. I mean that you literally can describe every event in the movie in three sentences or less, without resorting to summarization. I won’t bother because it’s frankly not that interesting, and even reading this sentence explaining why I’m not bothering to is a more productive use of your time than reading a sentence of that plot. The plot is so nonsensical that if you relayed it to a seven year old, she would slap you with a piece of pizza and then call 911 on account of you obviously suffering a stroke.

Of the 85 minute run time, approximately 82 minutes of it is a car chase. It might be more than one. It’s really impossible to tell because of a complete inability on the part of the director to shoot the film such that’s it’s possible to tell what the hell is going on. There are lots of engines roaring, zooming by anonymous places, with no sense of actual place, movement, or direction. Ethan Hawke shifts a lot, and turns the wheel with a great deal of gusto.

He starts the car a lot too. Every time he dramatically swerved and crashed his way to a half second pause, the movie made a point of having him turn the key in the ignition to start the car. Because apparently the director of the film has never actually driven an automobile and seems to think that if the car comes to a complete stop, you have to start it again. Either that or the roar as the engine revved back to life is the only way the director can achieve an erection.

Ooh, and don’t forget the zoomed in shots of Hawke’s boots mashing on one pedal or another. I mean, that shot was repeated at least a hundred times, so much that I can only assume that the director has some sort of boot fetish on top of an engine fetish. Sometimes Hawke uses both of his feet to mash both of the pedals at the same time, which seems counter productive to me. I think the director might have actually thought that pushing both pedals would make the car go extra zoomy.

Beyond its mere stupidity and pointlessness, the film is an exercise in complete amateurism. It is made with the competence of a student film produced at the last minute by an drunk would-be director who is teetering on failing out of the third-rate film school that reluctantly decided to take his loan money.
I could look up the director’s name I suppose, but that would take more effort than he’s worth, and the film is so bad that it’s probably a hate crime to reveal the director’s identity.

At one point a power plant is blown up with a thumb drive. There’s not really any reason for it. But then there’s the obligatory shot of all the lights in the city going off. Of course, once the driving starts again fifteen seconds later and for the rest of the movie, all the buildings have lights on wherever they zoom zoom. That’s the level of complete inability to make a film that this thing boasts. If you feel that what has really held back the Fast and the Furious franchise has been too few car chases and too much coherence, then this is the film for you.

The fact that the movie ends with the twist that the villain gets away and directly tries to set itself up to have a sequel is so monumentally delusional that I can only imagine the film was made in North Korea. This thing is sitting at 2% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, with only a single positive review from Norman Wilner, who could find something complimentary to say about a vomit smoothie if it needed a quote.

This is the sort of film that should have been put on a shelf and forgotten about for the sakes of the careers of everyone involved. But nobody’s seeing it anyway, so I suppose there is some good taste left in America. College town, opening night, and I am the only person in a theater for a film with the sole draw of Selena Gomez. The summary of her performance is that she is shrill and annoying. Of course her annoying me is the solitary emotional reaction the movie managed to wring out of me in that exhausting hour and a half, so bully for her, I suppose.

They really shouldn’t have made this a PG-13 film since the only conceivable way of selling tickets to it would be to actually stick a Selena Gomez sex tape after the credits. Of course, Ms. Gomez’s virtue would remain intact, because it would be physically impossible to stay in the theater for any reason after the previous 85 minutes of soul crushing boredom.

Don’t give this film your money. It doesn’t have any entertainment value whatsoever.

Steven Lloyd Wilson is a hopeless romantic and the last scion of Norse warriors and the forbidden elder gods. His novel, ramblings, and assorted fictions coalesce at www.burningviolin.com. You can email him here and order his novel here.

Are you following Pajiba on Facebook or Twitter? Every time you do, Bill Murray crashes a wedding.

Comments Are Welcome, Bigots and Trolls Are Not

van1968

Ambivalence in a film review drives me crazy.

Bad Superman

Hawke's performance in Before Midnight is worthy of an Oscar nomination, so is the film itself.

Uriah_Creep

the only conceivable way of selling tickets to it would be to actually stick a Selena Gomez sex tape after the credits

You have no vision, SLW. Make the whole thing a Selena Gomez sex tape and it would sell much better. And all the guys in the audience would leave after 10 minutes, allowing a fast turnover of the audience.

VohaulsRevenge

Ten minutes? Speak for yourself!

Uriah_Creep

I didn't mean to impune anyone's virility, but I figure if you can't take care of business in 10 minutes while watching a Selena Gomez sex film on the large screen, you may be overthinking things. You're not there to knit a quilt, after all.

Untamed

"the film is so bad that it’s probably a hate crime to reveal the director’s identity."

I bow to you, oh king of reviewers. I watched the trailer before The World's End. It was a good thing that I so wanted to see that excellent film because this one was enough to make you give up films. And I only saw the trailer.

Ryan Ambrose

Ethan Hawke's facial expression and the review title say it all:

"Hello darkness my old frieeeend..."

Semilitterate

So I guess the take-away is that you weren't too enthralled with this flick. Perhaps next time you could tell us how you really feel.

SeaKat Stabler

So, I could be wrong... but the two feet mashed on the pedal sounds like heel-and-toe shifting.

Which I know about because my husband is really into performance driving and he frequently expounds at length about the awesomeness of these sorts of things while my eyes start to glaze...

Joe Grunenwald

Perhaps the producers had a special camera rigged up just for shots of Hawke's feet, and the cost of the camera was so high that they demanded the director use it every time he possibly could. Perhaps, also, they spent all of their money on that foot camera rather than invest in a script or a good director.

emmelemm

Alternatively, the boots in question are stunt boots and thus, the cost to shoot those scenes with the "second unit" or whatever was ridiculously low.

yocean

This is what I come to this site for. Thanks for the well-directed vitriol. Oh happy day.

"Sometimes Hawke uses both of his feet to mash both of the pedals at the same time, which seems counter productive to me. I think the director might have actually thought that pushing both pedals would make the car go extra zoomy."

Well if he was pressing the clutch with the left foot yes, but when he is slamming both feet down at once on the brake and the accelerator, that doesn't have anything to do with any manual shifting that I am aware of. And since 22% of the movie is composed of Ethan Hawke's boots, it's hard not to notice.

Misomaniac

Actually, NASCAR drivers do that. It keeps the RPMs up, but momentarily slows the car. So in fact, it is an accurate depiction of what a NASCAR might do when racing a mustang around a city. This error on your part, of course, brings your opinion into question. You should have stuck with 'I quit'.

SeaKat Stabler

Oh hush. Heel-and-toe shifting is not exactly a common thing for the average bear to know about.

And it has NOTHING to do with whether the movie was a cinematic failure. I certainly wouldn't want to see 100 shots of anyone doing it, whether or not it's accurate for the character. One or two, sure. 100? WE GET IT. YOU R A PERFESHUNUL DRIVUH.

Fabius_Maximus

Okay, that's just stupid then. Hilariously so, though.

Samantha Klein

I felt forced to look him up, so I just wanted to share with everyone that the director in question here also directed Dungeons & Dragons (2000), for which I think the Academy should demand that Jeremy Irons give back his Oscar.

Okay the title of the review was already great. The choice of header pic (clearly showing the stars thinking said title) made it perfect. But the intro lines...made it transcendent.

BuffyloGal

Wasn't Ethan Hawke recently on a list of under-rated B-movie actors? What happened to that premise? If he ain't got Delpy, he ain't got anything is what I say.

Jim

Thanks for confirming my assumption - the trailer played before Pegg's movie last week and at the part where the evil voice is demanding Hawke shoot Gomez (or push her out of the car, I didn't much care), several people in the audience yelled "Do it! DO it!"

(Though now that I think perhaps they liked her and meant to save her the horror of the rest of the movie?)

Sherry

I could be hyperbolic here, but I think this may be the best review on this site to date. Maybe it's just my mood, but this made my little black heart grow three sizes today.

eaterofbirds

"Vomit smoothie"

You win the internet with this analogy.

TherecanbeonlyoneAdmin

Your pain sustains me.

frank247

So, did you like it or not?

with_club_sauce

The title of this review made me laugh harder than it should have.

OhSayNow

Thanks to the title, I am now going to spend the rest of the day singing, "Get away Getaway. Stay away Getaway."

dizzylucy

Me too. Clearly David Schwartz either saw an early cut of this film, or is some sort of musically prophetic film reviewer. "Getaway? Stay away."

"The film is so bad that it’s probably a hate crime to reveal the director’s identity."I can't even tell you how much I love this sentence.

Uriah_Creep

At the risk of being prosecuted for the hate crime, I'll say that the director is a Canadian named Courtney Solomon; that's a dude, by the way. His highest-rated movie (An American Haunting) is currently soaring at 12% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Fredo

Enya-style please.

damnitjanet

You should have just stopped after the resignation letter. That told me all I need to know about this festering turd.

I'm just gonna go ahead and say it because no one else ever does: Ethan Hawke is officially THE WORST. He's even worse now than when he used to be just low rent Tom Cruise. He's insufferably terrible. Always. I've heard that the horror movie he made last year was pretty good but I'll never know because I refuse to waste another minute watching him. I'll likewise never see The Getaway but I have a very hard time imagining that it could possibly be worse than Chelsea Walls, that horrible pile of shit that Hawke both starred in and directed and what is literally one of the very worst movies ever made.

**I AM** NotTheOne

*Raises glass of whiskey in a toast*

He has been dead to me since "Reality Bites". He even made Ben Stiller look good to me for a couple of hours and I can't stand Ben Stiller. Hawke's face is so inherently punchable. The man is in his forties and he still looks like he struggles to grow real facial hair. I can't...

His best movie is "Training Day". Denzel Washington's character made his life miserable for most of the movie. It was great. You should watch it.

Repo

I'm going to wager you've never seen the trilogy he made with Linklater and Julie Delpy.

I'm hot and cold on Linklater, but I just can't bring myself to do it with those "Before" movies. Hawke is just too much of a talent suck for me to commit.

Fredo

So it's a dumber, PG-13 version of Drive Angry, with Hawke in for Nicolas Cage and Selena Gomez in for Amber Heard? Which was in itself a dumber version of The Chase, with Cage in place of Charlie Sheen and Heard in for Kristy Swanson? Which, obviously, is like so many other films just another take on Smokey and the Bandit, with Sheen in place of Burt Reynolds and his mustache and Swanson being Sally Field?

Yeah, I'll pass.

emmelemm

Now THAT is a comment.

For the record, I enjoyed Drive Angry. It had a sense of humor and William Fichtner.

I was viewing this on my phone and honestly thought the review was six words long. I thought to myself, "Best. Review. Ever!" and the started panicking at the thought of losing SLW's reviews. Imagine my relief when I scrolled far enough down to read things like "Thai martial arts movies dubbed with Russian." So grateful for Pajiban reviews. :)

Misomaniac

This review started off on such a happy note...

lowercase_ryan

Hey Maguita, I smell a date night....

Also Steven I'm sorry you had to do this. I really wish these things were strictly reserved for TK.

Maguita NYC

Can I have alcohol? A shot everytime Ethan starts the car. Yes it is true I'd be somewhat "tipsy" within the first 15 minutes of the film, but I see no other way except maybe surrendering to a full day of Futball.